Brown Fine Ballast Bag

Brown stone from a local quarry

A brown tone with no gray hint matches stone that was quarried a short way from the line and carries earth and iron oxides in it. A bed like that appears on branch lines, industrial spurs and everywhere the cost of hauling crushed stone from a distance was not taken lightly. The same color also suits roads worn into an earth subgrade, where gravel mixes with soil.

Typical use

• the bed of a branch line where every wagon of hauled stone was counted
• a made-up field road or the approach to a farm building
• little heaps of crushed stone at a building site, in a quarry and on a dump
• the fill between ties, where the layer is meant to look earthy and uneven

Before the work it is good to shake the material, because the fine fractions settle at the bottom of the bag and the coarser fraction stays in the upper part. The poured layer is evened out with a flat brush or a strip of cardboard, so that the slope of the bed arises with a distinct edge. Then the area spread out on the base is sprayed with degreased water and soaked with white glue thinned to a milky consistency. Release the soaking at the edge of the layer and let it soak in, otherwise the binder will form glossy puddles.

The shade can be shifted further: a thinned black paint dirties the layer along the rails, an ocher pigment on the contrary lightens the places exposed to the sun. The brown grit also works well as a transition between a gray bed and a grassy slope, because it links the two colors. The package has a volume of 353 cm³.